Mr. Poe Takes the Stage (Part One of Two)

“[T]he most exquisite of sublunary pleasures…[is] the making of a fuss, or, in the classical words of a western friend, the ‘kicking up a bobbery.’”
-Edgar Allan Poe, writing in the “Broadway Journal,” November 22, 1845

One of the most notable incidents that led to the destruction of Poe's reputation was his appearance at the Boston Lyceum on October 16, 1845. The uproar surrounding his recital of "Al Aaraaf"--a performance that seems to have largely confounded his audience--and his subsequent public war of words with "Boston Transcript" editor Cornelia Walter served, perhaps more than any other event during his lifetime, to cement Poe's image as a drunken, erratic lunatic. While at least some of Poe's biographers realize that the disastrous nature of his actual appearance before the Lyceum was greatly exaggerated afterwards--in no small part due to the efforts of Poe himself--there has been no consensus about Poe's motives and intentions regarding the notorious recital. Did his failure to produce an “original” address for the occasion lead him to recycle an old poem out of desperation, or, as he asserted, did he deliberately mean to "quiz the Bostonians?" Or was it a sign he was simply going mad?

It is possible that Poe did find himself unable to produce a new poem “on order” for the occasion—like most men of genius, he was unable to “commercialize” himself—and so resorted to this obscure early work. However, I suspect that Poe's own explanation was closest to the truth. His disdain for the Bostonians was certainly quite genuine. It is easy to picture him presenting them with "Al Aaraaf"--a mystical exploration of Heaven, Hell and the grey area that lies between--as a deliberate challenge to their well-known intellectual and spiritual pretensions. He likely assumed the poem, a cousin of "Ulalume," "Israfel," "Dream-Land," "The Conqueror Worm," and others, would be completely over their heads, and he undoubtedly saw their confusion as further proof of their inferiority.

When Poe accepted the invitation to appear in Boston, he knew perfectly well that he was entering enemy territory. His very public mockery of the New England intelligentsia, as well as his recent campaign to prove that Longfellow, the darling of the Bostonians, was a plagiarist, ensured that his appearance would be controversial. The Boston newspapers even predicted that if Poe dared to show his face in their city, the audience "would poh at him, at once." It is usually assumed that Poe's motives in taking on such an obviously hazardous assignment were purely financial. Pressed for money, he agreed to appear in front of the Lyceum, despite the potential for disaster. However, just the opposite may be true--that he welcomed the invitation precisely because of the potential for disaster. Poe was never happier than when in the thick of literary battle--the noisier and more violent it was, the better he liked it. When he cheerfully asserted in the "Broadway Journal" that he accepted the chance to appear before a Boston audience because he was curious to see what it would be like to be hissed at in public, he may not have been entirely facetious.Certainly, his performance seemed designed to confuse and irritate his audience as much as possible. After delivering a brief, self-deprecating address that was clearly dripping with sarcasm, he proceeded to recite “Al Aaraaf"—lengthy, complicated verses that are probably the most abstruse he--or just about anyone else, for that matter--ever wrote. Although he followed up his performance by fulfilling audience requests to hear "The Raven"--a recitation that, by most accounts, went over well--the damage had been done. Some attendees, already stupefied by a three-hour speech by Massachusetts politician Caleb Cushing, found Poe's obscurities too much to handle, and walked out on him with the vague feeling that they had been insulted.

That feeling was entirely justified. At a private gathering that was held after the recital, Poe asserted that "Al Aaraaf" was intended to spoof the audience. It had, he claimed, been written before he was twelve years old, and that such a juvenile work was quite sufficient for the likes of the Bostonians. His expressions of contempt for his audience were, of course, widely circulated, and, of course, the local papers responded in kind. Cornelia Walter, who already had it in for Poe because of his "Longfellow War," immediately published an editorial describing Poe's performance as a humiliating failure. From then on, she used the "Boston Transcript" as a forum to regularly mock him, often in the crudest terms possible. Although at least one other Boston paper, as well as several members of the audience, described Poe's recital as beautiful, if somewhat baffling to most listeners, they were drowned out by the catcalls of his enemies, who made full use of the means Poe had provided to attack him.

Say what you will about Poe, but he was always ready to give his opponents as good, or better, than he received. As his contemporary John Du Solle once remarked, "If Mr. P. had not been gifted with considerable gall, he would have been devoured long ago by the host of enemies his genius has created." Two weeks after his Lyceum appearance, Poe wrote a lengthy editorial in the "Broadway Journal" giving his side of the story. He showed no remorse for his actions. Indeed, he countered that “that most beguiling of all beguiling little divinities" Miss Walter "has been telling a parcel of fibs about us, by way of revenge for something we did to Mr. Longfellow (who admires her very much) and for calling her ‘a pretty little witch’ into the bargain." According to Poe, his recital was a smashing success. The approbation he received “was considerably more (the more the pity too) than that bestowed upon Mr. Cushing.” He asserted that all the claims his appearance had been a failure were entirely due to “that amiable little enemy of ours,” at the “Boston Transcript.” (He added that “We shall never call a woman ‘a pretty little witch’ again, as long as we live.”)

Having finished with his defense, Poe gleefully went on the offense. He acknowledged that he himself had been born in Boston, “and perhaps it is just as well not to mention that we are heartily ashamed of the fact.” Bostonians “have always evinced towards us individually, the basest ingratitude for the services we rendered them in enlightening them about the originality of Mr. Longfellow.” This prejudice against him, Poe explained, made it scarcely possible that he would put himself to the trouble of composing an original poem for such an audience, so he favored them with one that was “quite as good as new—one, at all events, that we considered would answer sufficiently well for an audience of Transcendentalists.” This poem, he blandly assured his readers, was one which he had written, printed, and published in book form “before we had fairly completed our tenth year.” He sardonically commented that “We do not, ourselves, think the poem a remarkably good one:--it is not sufficiently transcendental.” However, his listeners “evinced characteristic discrimination in understanding, and especially applauding, all those knotty passages which we ourselves have not yet been able to understand.” Unfortunately, he sighed, he could not resist “letting some of our cat out of the bag a few hours sooner than we had intended,” when he told his dinner companions of the success of his hoax. His conclusion: “We should have waited a couple of days.”

Next post: The power of words.

(Image: Boston Common--Frogpondians and all--circa 1845, courtesy of New York Public Library.)

The Many Deaths of Edgar Poe

"And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die"
-Oscar Wilde, "Ballad of Reading Gaol"

The major roadblock in the efforts to solve the mystery of Poe's death is the strange fact that none of the witnesses to his final days ever managed to coordinate their testimonies with each other, or even themselves. Poe's biographers tend to cherry-pick among the various accounts given over the years by Joseph Snodgrass, Dr. Moran, Neilson Poe, and other minor figures, selecting and arranging statements as they would pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in order to build whatever narrative most pleases them. For the most part, these chroniclers find it easiest to ignore the fact that whenever you are presented with multiple conflicting accounts of the same event, that only means that none of them can be trusted.

The most commonly accepted story is that a Joseph Walker encountered a disheveled, semi-conscious man "who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe," in Baltimore's Ryan's Tavern. Walker was able to ascertain that the unfortunate man was an acquaintance of Snodgrass, who was immediately summoned. According to Snodgrass, he accompanied the poet to the hospital. Unfortunately, his details of the event varied over the years that he told and re-told the story, and it is established that he manipulated facts in at least one crucial area--the text of the note Walker supposedly sent alerting him to Poe's desperate condition. He falsely claimed Walker warned him that Poe was intoxicated, a lie which does little for Snodgrass' credibility.

Then, of course, the biographies go on to relate Dr. Moran's colorful and harrowing descriptions of his famous patient screaming the name "Reynolds" in his delirium, declaring that the best thing his friends could do for him was to blow out his brains, finally conquering the fever called living with the plaintive plea for God to help his poor soul, etc., etc. (Historians generally ignore Moran's later accounts, which are, amazingly, even more lurid. He also showed a remarkable inconsistency with even the most basic facts, such as the day Poe was brought to the hospital, where he was found--he occasionally liked to say the poet was discovered by an anonymous passerby "lying on a bench by a wharf"--and when he died. According to Poe’s biographer Eugene Didier, Moran lied about having personally attended Poe at all. Again, the point has to be made--if Moran's later versions of Poe's death are demonstrably inconsistent and untrustworthy, why should his original tale be trusted?)

What further complicates the whole matter is the fact that there is a much lesser known, and seemingly equally credible, version of Poe's death that utterly contradicts everything cited above. It comes from a distant relative of his, Elisabeth Ellicott Poe. According to Miss Poe, on October 3, 1849, her grandfather, George Poe Sr. (who was Edgar’s first cousin,) was walking along the streets of Baltimore when saw a man, whom he presumed to be in a drunken stupor, lying beneath the steps of the Baltimore Museum. When he looked closer at the figure, he realized, to his horror, that it was his literary cousin. After sending for Neilson Poe, who lived nearby, George Poe took his unconscious relative to the hospital. Mrs. Clemm was sent for, and doctors worked for days to save the poet. However, he never fully regained consciousness, and finally died on the morning of October 7. Elisabeth Poe was an advocate of the “cooping” theory—that Edgar had been shanghaied by the “Plug Uglies,” a local political organization, drugged, and utilized for their curious electoral purposes. The combination of drugs and exposure, she declared, had killed her famous relative.

Now, of course, Miss Poe’s story—which she claimed was verified by Neilson Poe himself—contradicts the accepted Snodgrass/Moran accounts in practically every detail. Neilson Poe himself was of little help in getting to the bottom of the mystery. Others who knew him asserted that he believed Poe had indeed been “cooped,” a misadventure which resulted in his death. However, a month after Edgar’s demise, Neilson wrote Rufus Griswold that "The history of the last few days of his life is known to no one so well as to myself...I think I can demonstrate that he passed, by a single indulgence, from a condition of perfect sobriety to one bordering upon the madness usually occasioned only by long continued intoxication, and that he is entitled to a far more favorable judgment upon his last hours than he has received..." In short, his famous cousin went on one spree too many. Neilson promised to make a “deliberate communication” on the subject, but so far as we know, he never did.

In 1871, a journalist provided Richard Henry Stoddard with an account he claimed to have received from Neilson. Assuming this journalist quoted him accurately, Neilson claimed that he somehow found Edgar “in a state of insensibility,” and brought him to the hospital. In this version of the story, there was merely a “horrible suspicion” that he had been “cooped.” According to this journalist, while Edgar was traveling to Philadelphia from Baltimore, he took one drink that immediately sent him into a “state of delirium,” and the conductor of the train returned him to Baltimore (presumably, just dumping this stricken stranger on the street to fend for himself.) What happened next was unclear, but the implication was that he then somehow fell into the hands of the unscrupulous ward managers.

Unfortunately, this story is, of course, undocumented (and this journalist never made it clear how Neilson Poe learned all this, as Edgar himself was unable to say what had happened to him.) It does not even come directly from Neilson. It is one of the many inexplicable enigmas surrounding Edgar Poe’s death that, although Neilson evidently spent a good deal of effort investigating the tragedy, he never publicly gave any detailed, first-hand account of what he believed had happened. The reasons for his odd reticence are unknown.

It is strange enough that we do not know for certain where Edgar Poe was or what he was doing in the five or so days between his departure from Richmond and his arrival in Moran’s hospital, or that we cannot even make an educated guess about what killed him. It is virtually incomprehensible that so basic a matter as who first discovered him in Baltimore and brought him to the doctors, where he was found, and whether or not he was intoxicated at the time should be such a matter of dispute. It all makes George W. Eveleth’s assertion that Poe’s death was simply a hoax seem quite rational in comparison.

Poe and the Milk of Paradise

"[I] was afraid, from the wild imaginations manifested in your writings, that you were an opium-eater--had some chance for hope that this might not be the case, as the same wildness was evident in your childhood productions--supposed that you could not have acquired the habit when so young, and therefore hoped."
-George W. Eveleth, letter to Edgar Allan Poe, January 11, 1848

One of the many disastrous effects of a strange, near-universal mania for reading Poe’s writings as hidden autobiography is the fact that, because several of the narrators of his stories used opium, it is often assumed that he himself was familiar with the narcotic. No serious modern-day Poe biographer credits the idea that he was a habitual drug user, as scholars recognize that his literary depictions of the drug were inspired by contemporary works such as Thomas De Quincey’s “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.” However, the image of him as the wild-eyed poète maudit ecstatically scribbling verses and stories while in an opium-fueled frenzy is amazingly durable, particularly on the Internet. Never underestimate the power of mythology.Considering the popularity of the belief that Poe was an opium addict, it is rather remarkable that the evidence in its favor is so weak. In 1850, the poet William Ross Wallace wrote John Neal that alcohol, taken alternately with opium, “kept him [Poe] half his days in madness.” Wallace knew Poe, but not at all intimately, and Poe seems to have privately disliked him, although he admired some of Wallace’s poetry. The tone of Wallace’s letter is of someone passing on gossip rather than relaying first-hand information. (Ironically, Wallace himself was an unstable character notorious for his dissipation. He may well have been projecting his own failings on Poe.) Poe’s biographer George Woodberry said that Neilson Poe’s daughter Amelia told him that Edgar’s cousin Elizabeth Herring stated that “his periods of excess were occasioned by a free use of opium.” I have mentioned my reasons for doubting this—at best—third-hand testimony here. Our ubiquitous old friend Susan Archer Talley Weiss wrote that Rosalie Poe had visited Fordham in the spring of 1846 (we have no other evidence this visit took place,) and had witnessed an incident where her brother “begged for morphine.”

I have chronicled Mrs. Weiss’ amazing powers of imagination since literally the first day of this blog. Suffice to say that if she asserted the sun rose in the east, that alone would be enough to make me dismiss the notion.

In the 1870s, Annie Richmond produced a copy of a letter she claimed to have received from Poe in November of 1848, describing his attempts to commit suicide through an overdose of laudanum. According to this letter, he miscalculated. His body, unused to such poison, rejected the laudanum and sent him into unconsciousness before he could take the full dose. Assuming Mrs. Richmond provided an accurate transcript of this letter—and it must be said I believe her to be only slightly more honest than Susan Weiss—and also assuming the incident was not one of the colorful fables Poe enjoyed telling about himself, this has been seen as proof that Poe was not accustomed to taking drugs.

In his 1896 “Reminiscences of Poe,” Thomas Dunn English firmly rejected the idea that Poe took drugs. He said, “Had Poe the opium habit when I knew him, I should, both as a physician and a man of observation, have discovered it…” English’s account is a remarkably ingenious work of libel, relying on malicious, sly intimations against Poe which he did not have even have the courage to explicitly describe (likely because he knew they could be refuted if he did.) It is something of a minor masterwork of the use of vague insinuation in the cause of character assassination. As I have said before, I do not believe English knew Poe nearly as well as he claimed, but in any case, it is reasonable to believe that if he thought he could get away with using charges of drug use against his old enemy, he would have done so. The fact that he did not is surely a strong piece of evidence in Poe’s favor.

Similarly, English’s business associate Thomas H. Lane, who knew Poe in his Philadelphia and New York years, alleged that one or two drinks could instantly transform Poe from someone “in every way a gentleman” into a surly drunk. However, he was positive the poet was never a drug user.

John Carter, a Richmond doctor who had socialized with Poe during the poet’s visit there in 1849, wrote Woodberry that “Poe never used opium in any instance that I am aware of, and if it had been a habitual practice, we certainly would have detected it, as he numbered amongst his associates half-dozen physicians…I never heard it hinted before, and if he had contracted the habit, it would have accompanied him to Richmond.” (Unfortunately for Poe, Woodberry ignored this unequivocal, first-hand medical testimony in favor of the Susan Weiss/Amelia Poe hearsay. In his biography of Poe, he asserted his belief that Poe used drugs, although he admitted that “it is only a personal view, and may be erroneous.”)

Incidentally, this passage from Woodberry’s book serves as an example of the dangers of trusting Poe biographies too implicitly. Hervey Allen, in his inexplicably popular “Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe,” quoted—whether through a deliberate desire to smear Poe or sheer stupidity (the baroque silliness of his book makes either theory plausible) repeated Woodberry’s conjecture that Poe used drugs—but quoted it as part of Dr. Carter’s letter to Woodberry. Thus, the unsuspecting reader of Allen’s book was left to believe that a medical man who knew Poe well believed he was an addict, when, in truth, he said precisely the opposite. This is just one of the many reasons why, whenever I begin to peruse Allen’s biography, I am faced with the strong urge to hurl it against the wall. (I refrain, however—flinging around Kenneth Silverman’s “Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance” left enough damage in my home.)

In short, while it cannot be proved “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Poe did not take opium—in history, nothing is more futile than trying to prove a negative—there is no reliable evidence of his drug use, and the testimony refuting the charge is considerably more assertive and credible.

There is, as well, an odd legend that Poe also took absinthe, which, in his day, acted as a hallucinogenic. The sole evidence for this is a 1988 book describing itself as a “history” of the liqueur. It listed “Edgar Allen Poe” (whenever a Poe source cannot get the middle name right, you know you’re in for a rocky ride,) as a drinker of “absinthe and brandy.” This claim is found nowhere else in history, and the author provided no documentation or source for his statement.

Unfortunately, once any allegation, no matter how absurd and unproven, gets into print, it takes on an invincible life of its own. Sure enough, every few weeks or so I stumble upon a blog, website, or newspaper article chattering merrily about the notorious madman Edgar Poe, opium and absinthe addict.

It’s all enough to make a poor-devil Poe blogger want to reach for the laudanum bottle herself. With an absinthe-and-brandy chaser, please.

Whether You Loved or Hated "Arthur Gordon Pym"...

...I recommend reading Mat Johnson's "Pym." It's often hilarious, and refreshingly original. I thought the first half of the book was much better than the second, but, then, that's what a lot of people have said about Poe's original work. If, like me, you've had some harrowing experiences in the deranged world of academia, you'll find some of the mockery particularly delicious. However, even if you have no interest in Poe (in which case, pray tell, why are you here?) this is one of the best social satires (a sadly dying breed) I've read since "A Confederacy of Dunces." A comedic novel based largely on racial issues is a particularly tricky business, but I think Johnson handled that aspect of the book cleverly and sanely, simply by lampooning us all.

In any case, how could I not like a book containing the line, "In this age when reality is built on big lies, what better place for truth than fiction?"

Despite what most of the reviews have said, however, I think it's a good idea to read (or re-read) Poe's novel before tackling this book. I've always believed "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" was itself meant as satire--albeit of a characteristically cryptic and mystical kind--so having a detailed familiarity with his work brings a fuller dimension to Johnson's reinvention. (Incidentally, I largely disagree with Johnson's interpretation of Poe's "Pym," but that's irrelevant to this novel, particularly since, considering the context of his book, I question whether he meant this interpretation to be treated completely seriously.)

Yet Another Cautionary Tale

On January 11, 1848, George W. Eveleth wrote Poe a letter in which he quoted from a statement made by an editor of a paper called the "Weekly Universe." This statement said, "Edgar A. Poe, in the estimation of the editors of the 'Universe,' holds a high rank, regarded either as an elegant tale-writer, a poet, or a critic. He will be more fairly judged after his death than during his life. His habits have been shockingly irregular, but what amendment they have undergone within the past six months we cannot say, for Mr. Poe, during that time, has been in the country--we know him personally--he is a gentleman--a man of fine taste and warm impulses, with a generous heart. The little eccentricities of his character are never offensive except when he is drunk..." Eveleth went on to say that he had been told the names of the editors and contributors of the "Universe," and asked if Poe indeed knew them.

On February 29, Poe responded, "The editor of the 'Weekly Universe' speaks kindly and I find no fault with his representing my habits as 'shockingly irregular.' He could not have had the 'personal acquaintance' with me of which he writes; but has fallen into a very natural error...I do not know the 'editors & contributors' of the 'Weekly Universe' and was not aware of the existence of such a paper."

Poe's statement is something to be kept in mind when weighing the validity of the numerous "reminiscences of Poe" that were brought before the public after his death. With many of these reminiscences, not only are the stories they offered completely uncorroborated, but we have only the speaker's unsupported word that he or she had ever even laid eyes on the poet--and Poe, unlike in the case noted above, was no longer around to confirm or deny their acquaintance.

The Poetic Principle

"The Poetic Principle" was Poe's last major prose work. It was a lecture he delivered several times in 1848 and 1849, although it was not published until after his death. While ostensibly merely an analysis on his pet theories about verse, it is also, like "Eureka," and "The Domain of Arnheim," an exploration of his most deeply-held personal philosophies.

He began with his famous claim that "a long poem does not exist." While verses should not be so brief that they "degenerate into mere epigrammatism," a poem "deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul...But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient...After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags--fails--a revulsion ensues--and then the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such."

Anyone who had to read "The Faerie Queene" in school can't disagree.

His next dictum was that the sole effect of a poem should be to "elevate the soul," that "the value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement." Again, he made the point that a long poem would necessarily be a failure because "that degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length."

Thirdly, he called for poetry to have unity, a "totality of effect or impression." In other words, one part of a poem should not clash in style or mood with another. This unity, Poe believed, was impossible with lengthy poems.

Most importantly, he said, the poet had to discard what he called "the heresy of the didactic." "It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral; and by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged...We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force."

Poe was having none of that. He stated that the enforcement of the True required severity, simplicity, preciseness, coolness--in other words, the exact opposite of the poetic spirit. The aim of all genuine poetry was not Truth, but Beauty; to invoke an instinctive response that awakens the reader to a sense of his or her own divinity--an "elevation of the soul." His description of this goal is impossible to paraphrase:

"An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sentiments amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, or sentiments, a duplicate source of delight...We have still a thirst unquenchable...This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us--but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone."

Poe saw this human instinct to connect with the world of the spirit as taking various forms--painting, sculpture, dance, architecture, landscape gardening (a look back at "The Domain of Arnheim,") but particularly in music, where "the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles--the creation of supernal Beauty." He saw poetry and music, with their similar modes of rhythm and rhyme, as virtual partners in this creation. (Although one wonders how much of the Beautiful he would find in your typical Top 40 playlist of today. But I digress.) The true artist acts as a guide for the rest of humanity in their unconscious need to transcend the earthly bodies which cage our souls, and unite with God--a God whose spirit is within every object and creature in our world. "The struggle to apprehend the supernal loveliness--this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constituted--has given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic."His description of the "Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty" should be read by everyone who accepts with the utmost seriousness all the legends of his many bizarre romantic entanglements. One finds it hard to reconcile the man depicted in, say, "Poe's Mary," or the libels of John Evangelist Walsh with the writer of these lines:

"...the manifestation of the Principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the Soul, quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Heart--or of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For, in regard to Passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade, rather than to elevate the Soul. Love, on the contrary--Love--the true, the divine Eros--the Uranian, as distinguished from the Dionæan Venus--is unquestionably the purest and truest of all poetical themes."

At the end of the essay, Poe gave us his conception of true Poetry by listing some of the elements "which induce in the Poet himself the true poetical effect." It is among my favorite passages in any of his works, and if I ever get my hands on a time machine, one of the first places I'm going is Richmond in the summer of 1849 to hear them recited by their author. This peroration, in the opinion of Arthur H. Quinn, was where "Poe's true self flashed out." If he was correct, it would serve as proof for what I have argued on practically every post on this blog--that the Edgar Allan Poe depicted in most of his biographies never existed, that nearly all we think we know about him is based on some of the most shameless lies imaginable.

The Poet, Poe said, "...recognises the ambrosia which nourishes his soul, in the bright orbs that shine in Heaven--in the volutes of the flower--in the clustering of low shrubberies--in the waving of the grain-fields--in the slanting of tall, Eastern trees--in the blue distance of mountains--in the grouping of clouds--in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks--in the gleaming of silver rivers--in the repose of sequestered lakes--in the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds--in the harp of Æolus--in the sighing of the night-wind--in the repining voice of the forest--in the surf that complains to the shore--in the fresh breath of the woods--in the scent of the violet--in the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth--in the suggestive odor that comes to him, at eventide, from far-distant, undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts--in all unworldly motives--in all holy impulses--in all chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman--in the grace of her step--in the lustre of her eye--in the melody of her voice--in her soft laughter--in her sigh--in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels it in her winning endearments--in her burning enthusiasms--in her gentle charities--in her meek and devotional endurances--but above all--ah, far above all--he kneels to it--he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty--of her love."

Two Questionable Poe Poems [Updated]

Over the years, many works that have either disappeared or that were published anonymously have been "attributed" to Poe. Some of these attributions are credible, but far too many writings have been attached to his name due to sheer reckless disregard for any standards of normal scholarship. Two of the best-known examples of the latter category are two "lost" poems, "Lines on Ale," and "The Beloved Physician."

The responsibility for anointing "Lines on Ale" as a Poe composition rests upon Thomas O. Mabbott. In 1939, he published in the journal "Notes and Queries" the claim that on one of Poe's visits to Lowell, Massachusetts, he visited a local tavern and was inspired to pen the following lines:

Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain--
Quaintest thoughts--queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.

This so-called poem was quoted to Mabbott by a man who claimed to be a former bartender at this establishment. Supposedly, the manuscript hung on the wall of the tavern for some years, but this Poe relic disappeared, as Mabbott vaguely put it, "before 1920." Despite the lack of any sort of corroboration of this man's story, as well as the inherent implausibility that Poe would have written such puerile doggerel, Mabbott--as was his habit in many matters--fell for it with a gullibility that almost defies belief. Simply because he chose to give this poem his official seal of approval, it is widely accepted as a genuine Poe work. However, it is far more likely that this bartender was enjoying a good joke at Mabbott's--and Poe's--expense.

"The Beloved Physician" may be an even more astonishing attribution. In 1875, Marie Louise Shew Houghton wrote Poe's biographer John H. Ingram that the late poet had written a ten-stanza poem in her honor. She was, as usual with her, unable to provide any proof of this assertion--as was the case with "Lines on Ale," the manuscript of the poem was conveniently "lost"--but she supplied Ingram with some stray lines that she claimed to remember from the composition:

The pulse beats ten and intermits;
God nerve the soul that ne'er forgets
In calm or storm, by night or day,
Its steady toil, its loyalty.

The pulse beats ten and intermits;
God shield the soul that ne'er forgets.

The pulse beats ten and intermits;
God guide the soul that ne'er forgets.

...so tired, so weary,
The soft head bows, the sweet eyes close,
The faithful heart yields to repose.

If Poe wrote these lines, I'm Rufus Griswold's grandma.

It's hard to even know what else to say about these poems. You might say they speak for themselves. It has long been a marvel to me how Poe specialists, even more than most other historians, seem utterly incapable of judging evidence. As Josephine Tey observed in "The Daughter of Time," historians "have no talent for the likeliness of any situation." What is worse, they usually appear indifferent to the fact that the need for such scrutiny even exists. And poor old Edgar has certainly paid the price for this indifference.

Update: Vindication!

Marginalia: Special J.H. Whitty Memorial Edition

In 1911, Poe enthusiast J.H. Whitty published what he said were previously unknown recollections of Poe written by the poet's close friend Frederick W. Thomas (who died in 1866.) These lengthy, detailed reminiscences have been used as source material by Poe biographers ever since. There are, however, certain obvious problems with these "Thomas Reminiscences":

1. All we have of Thomas' alleged acount is what Whitty published. The actual manuscript is not extant, and there is no record of it being seen by anyone other than Whitty. (His long-time associate Thomas O. Mabbott wrote that Whitty became "evasive" when Mabbott asked to see the document.)

2. We have only Whitty's word that he even acquired this previously unknown MS., and he was very vague about how they came into his hands. (He also claimed to have acquired proof-sheets of "late drafts" of several of Poe's poems that also somehow came into Thomas' hands, but these have similarly vanished.)

3. Whitty was, as one acquaintance described him, a "crank." He was an extremely peculiar fanatic who, like so many of the more unbalanced amateur Poe specialists, had an egomaniacal obsession with showing the world "new and previously unknown" material related to his idol. And--again like others of his type--it seems to have been unimportant to him if this material was genuine or not. During his long career, he came up with many other examples of "previously unknown" Poeana--much of which proved to be, as other Poe scholars were forced to admit, completely imaginary. The editors of the published collection of Poe's letters wrote tactfully that Whitty was "inclined to make exaggerated claims without documentation, and prone to romantic fancies." They admitted that Whitty's "veracity" has been questioned. Mabbott nonchalantly conceded that Whitty was "eccentric," "often wrong," "far from reliable," and inclined to mix fact with colorful fiction. He also wrote that Whitty "brought himself into disrepute by farfetched claims to 'discoveries about Poe'."

Given all of this, why in the world is this "Thomas manuscript" accepted unreservedly?

Incidentally, there are a number of other Whitty "discoveries" that are also, inexplicably, still used as source material, such as his completely lunatic--and completely undocumented--claim that Poe wrote two poems that appeared anonymously in "Graham's Magazine" in 1845, "Stanzas," and "Divine Right of Kings." Whitty claimed his source for this attribution was an old volume of "Graham's" in his possession, where Frances S. Osgood had written Poe's name at the bottom of these two poems. When asked to bring forth this volume, Whitty flatly refused, and to this day it has yet to be seen. Despite this highly self-incriminating refusal to prove his claims, these two dreadful poems are still to this day--for reasons that frankly baffle me--often republished as Poe's work, an attribution that undoubtedly would mortify the poor man. (Mabbott, who is largely responsible for these poems being accepted as Poe's, claimed that years after Whitty's "discovery" of these verses, a volume of "Graham's" was discovered in the Boston Public Library, with annotations in an unknown handwriting--definitely not Osgood's--assigning them to Poe. As I have pointed out before, it never occurred to Mabbott that we have no idea who wrote these notations and when it was done. It was undoubtedly the work of someone who had heard of Whitty's claims--or even Whitty himself. In any case, anonymous notations to anonymous poems can hardly be considered scholarly proof of anything.)

This attribution also ignores the fact that what evidence we have on the subject indicates that the poems in question, which were signed merely "P," were authored by Charles J. Peterson, who was then on the staff of "Graham's." Thomas O. Mabbott even admitted that signing poems with a single initial of a surname was "usually an editor's prerogative," which made his agreement to attribute these poems to Poe, rather than editor Peterson--who is accepted to have written other poems for "Graham's" signed "P"--utterly incomprehensible.

Incidentally, it was also Whitty who first posited the curious notion that Poe and Mrs. Osgood conducted a poetic "literary flirtation" in the pages of the "Broadway Journal." Until he began weaving this strange yarn in the early 1900s, no one had ever taken the least notice of these poems as any sort of biographical source material. (He also devised the even more ridiculous idea that Osgood's story "Ida Grey" reflected their relationship.) There really is little basis for his assertions, but Poe's biographers, charmed by the implied salaciousness of it all, have automatically parroted Whitty's fantasies ever since. All in all, if Whitty, like Susan Archer Talley Weiss, had not displayed the complete humorlessness that characterizes the true crackpot, I would seriously suspect that everything they wrote about Poe was an elaborate prank on history.

*****

It is exasperatingly typical of Poe that even details about his wedding are uncertain. His Richmond marriage to Virginia, which took place on this date in 1836, (happy anniversary, kids!) is usually described as having taken place in the parlor of the boardinghouse run by a Mrs. Yarrington, where he and the ladies Clemm were then living. It is also accepted that the young couple enjoyed a brief honeymoon in Petersburg, Virginia, as the guests of a local newspaper publisher named Hiram Haines. These claims, as well as nearly all the other details we have about the wedding, were first publicized in 1926, in Mary E. Phillips' "Edgar Allan Poe: The Man." Phillips' source for her account of the marriage and honeymoon was--wait for it!--none other than James Howard Whitty, who cited a "Jane Foster" who was supposedly one of the wedding guests.

However, F. B. Converse, the son of Amasa Converse, the minister who married the pair, told a journalist years later that the wedding was held in the parlor of his father's home. Dr. Converse added, "There were very few persons present at the wedding; my mother and the members of the family, and perhaps one or more companions, whom they brought with them." A Mrs. Mallory, who also lived in Mrs. Yarrington's boardinghouse, described Mrs. Clemm inviting her and some other ladies into her room, where she offered them cake and wine in celebration of the marriage, but this witness said nothing about the ceremony itself being held in the house. (Mrs. Mallory indicated that Mrs. Clemm's little impromptu party was the first she or any of the other women had heard of the marriage.)

If these accounts are true (and they at least have the virtue of being first-hand) it would discredit everything Whitty said this Jane Foster--who makes no other appearances in Poe's history--told him about the Poe wedding. I am not aware of any other independent source that verifies this alleged honeymoon--if anyone out there has found any such documentation, I would certainly like to know about it. (We also have nothing directly from Jane Foster herself.) Having Whitty's fingerprints on the tale is alone enough to make me uneasy about practically everything we think we "know" about the wedding, including Poe and Virginia's supposed Petersburg sojourn--as much as I'd like to think this star-crossed pair had at least one pleasant vacation during their union. The story of their honeymoon may well be true--at least, we know of no evidence that directly disproves it. (I emphasize this point in order to keep the good citizens of Petersburg from coming after me with the feathers and tar.) However, as is usual with Poe's history, it comes with a bit of a question mark. In any case, I hear that Petersburg's "Hiram Haines Coffee House," located in the building where the Poes supposedly resided during their honeymoon, is a charming place, and well worth a visit if you're ever in the area.


(Images of Poe bust and antebellum wedding courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery)

Update 12/10/11: While researching the "Raven's Bride" plagiarism case, blogger Archie Valparaiso unearthed a bit of historical information that not only refutes Lenore Hart's claims to have done original "historical research" on her now-discredited novel, it demolishes the legend of the entire Petersburg trip. Read of his discovery here, and savor the pure comedy gold.

If the railway from Richmond to Petersburg was only built after Edgar and Virginia were married, it, of course, renders the Whitty/Foster story about the newlyweds traveling by train an impossibility. And if that detail is false, it naturally discredits all of Whitty's account about the wedding and alleged honeymoon--a story that has been endlessly and trustingly repeated to this day.